I am lucky enough to own a print of L’Inconnue de la Seine. The image is by fine art & still life photographer Ali Mobasser. The story goes that when the woman’s body was fished out of the water at the Quai du Louvre, the Paris pathologist found her so mesmerisingly beautiful that he ordered a moulder to take a death mask of her face. No one ever identified the perfect, blemish-free body. But casts of the beautiful white plaster mask sold across Paris, then across Europe. It hung in the studios of artists and writers from Man Ray to Albert Camus, who described the calm, slightly smiling woman as a “drowned Mona Lisa.” You also might recognise her as Resusci Annie.
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